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Comment by jonplackett | Hacker News Reader

The more Apple have tried to strangle Spotify, the more I am determined to wait this out and get Spotify working properly on Siri and Watch.

Every time I accidentally say "Siri play ${song_name}" without appending "on Spotify" and Siri nonchalantly replies that it cannot find ${song_name} in my Apple Music library, I double down on my determination not to let them win!

Wasn't the default app thing declared a problem decades ago when Microsoft made you use IE? Why is Apple still allowed to force me to have Apple Music (and Apple Maps) as my defaults?

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On iOS 14.5 Siri will occasionally ask which service you meant and use that as the default for a while.

Although that’s just a “soft” default. If I press play on my headphones with both Spotify and AM closed it still latches to Apple Music.

I just asked to use Spotify as soon as I updated and now it doesn’t ask anymore. I don’t remember the exact query, but I know it exists.

I have trouble reconciling complaints like this with the argument that Apple should charge for App Store something based on the cost of operating the store. How do you price the engineering hours and strategy risk that go into opening an Apple feature like Siri to 3rd parties? Should it only be users who pay for those costs through their hardware purchase? Certainly not, since it’s impossible to predict those costs over the 5-6 year life of a new iPhone.

I’m paying for those costs with my £1300 iPhone. Now I want to set whatever app as default that I like.

Also it isn’t like apple aren’t offering those features - I can play music on Spotify with Siri already. They are just putting deliberate annoying barriers in the way to make their own product appear better.

There’s no way you are paying for 5 years of software development and your hardware for $1300. Suppose half the cost of iPhone was to build the physical object (likely low, given Apple’s 35% overall gross margins), you’re effectively saying that iOS is worth $10/mo, which is a gross underestimate. It is at least as complex a piece of software as Creative Cloud which costs $30/mo. As another benchmark, premium Android phones cost about as much as iPhone, but all the development costs of Android are primarily borne by a different vendor than the device maker.

Developing a model for your voice assistant that can route requests to the right handler is non-trivial. I think in a forum of software developers, I shouldn’t have to argue that there are many good faith reasons for this.

OK even if I accept your argument, I still don’t believe that gives apple the right to stifle their competition by forcing them to jump through arbitrary hoops. Like I’ve said - they are already giving Spotify access to Siri. They just make it deliberately painful. And as a software developer I really don’t think it would be remotely difficult to route calls for music to an alternative music app. They are already doing the hard work of deciding if a request is for music or something else.

By your logic Microsoft are also fine to force everyone to use internet explorer forever because they put so many hours into making windows.

That’s an argument that was lost 20 years ago.

I said nothing about the capabilities a platform provides. The point you are responding to is how to talk about a “fair price” for iOS, and who should pay for it. I don’t know why you bring up requirements about what interoperability platform providers should or must provide in this context.

> you’re effectively saying that iOS is worth $10/mo, which is a gross underestimate

Windows costs me way less than that, why should iOS cost 500$?

Why should the most successful commercial operating system in history with ongoing, major annual updates be as cheap as an operating system that’s been in maintenance mode for almost a decade?

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